


The Mirror

by redpenny



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (sort of and by a mirror), Apprentice Draco Malfoy, Auror Harry Potter, Chubby Draco, Chubby Kink, Established Relationship, Fat Shaming, Fluff, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Hogwarts Eighth Year, M/M, Post-Hogwarts, Weight Gain, belly appreciation, body image issues, fat admiration, talk of dieting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-26 15:41:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20932649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redpenny/pseuds/redpenny
Summary: Harry is as subtle as a hippogriff, Draco's mirror is an arse, and everyone keeps forgetting that Draco cannot have gained weight, as he is on a diet.





	The Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to an Eighth Year WIP in which Draco gets a bit chubby and Harry awkwardly courts him. Posting early because I think it can stand alone.
> 
> The chubby kink is probably relatively tame and the body image/fat shaming isn't meant to be angsty.

"Oh dear, I do hope you're not planning to wear that out of the house."

Draco halts on the way out of his tiny bedroom, whirling around to face the mirror.

"That waistcoat hardly even fits around your waist, no?" the mirror says. "Oh, Monsieur Draco, do not give me that look when I am only trying to help you."

Draco would accuse it of manufacturing the reflection of fabric straining over a rather fat paunch, except the waistcoat feels even tighter than it looks.

He can't take it off, though. The useless house elf he shares with the main house still hasn't got around to sewing back on the button missing from the shirt underneath.

"Indeed, Monsieur," the mirror continues blithely. "It might be time to get on that trip to the tailor's I've been recommending you, no?"

Draco seethes as best he can when he can't take a proper breath. "I don't _require_ a trip to the tailor's." 

"Well, I would have thought you'd want to look nice for your lovely boy. Is Monsieur 'Arry not due back soon?"

Draco wields his wand threateningly. "Do you _want_ your mouth hexed shut again?"

The mirror gasps. "Well, I never!"

Not that long ago, Harry had sighed as he'd reached for his wand, saying, "You know, Draco, the mirror's not actually so bad."

"Not so bad," Draco had repeated over the unintelligible sounds from it. "You _would_ say so. All it does is compliment you on your 'impressif' muscles."

Harry hadn't done a very good job of suppressing a smile as he'd said, "She'd be nicer to you if you were nicer to her."

"You want _me_ to be nicer to _it_?" Draco had exclaimed, indignant. "Did you hear what it just called me? Are you actually taking its side?"

Harry had glanced meaningfully down at Draco's middle, making him bristle. "I mean. You _have_ gained some weight, haven't you?"

"I have _not_, Potter." Draco had looked to the mirror — ignoring the insistent mumbles coming from behind its hexed mouth — and had verified that the shirt his reflection had been wearing was not, despite the mirror's assertions, in any danger of losing a button. "Have you both forgot that, as I'm on a diet, I _cannot_ have gained weight?"

"Er," Harry had said. "I suppose we did." 

He'd had given Draco's middle a placating pat before turning back to the mirror and raising his wand as Draco had stamped out of the room.

This isn't the first time Draco's put himself on a diet.

When he'd visited the Manor for Christmas in the middle of his eighth year, it had been no minor, nor inexpensive, feat to summon a tailor from London to adjust the fit of his school robes. And so, when it came time for him to return to Hogwarts, his mother had advised him to take better care with the sweets.

Draco had been rather good about it, too. But then, right when he'd been certain that the _miniscule_ pudge around his belly button was just about to budge, the Saviour of the Wizarding World had ruined it by deciding to court him with expensive chocolates and embarrassingly earnest looks across the Great Hall.

His mother may not have been pleased to discover he'd dug into the dregs of the Malfoy coffers for yet _another_ set of robes after the end of the year, but Draco had known she would have been even less pleased to have had him arriving in Paris for his Potions apprenticeship in ill-fitting robes like an impoverished _Weasley_.

He'd done his best to ignore the measurements Madame Malkin had called out to her assistant, knowing he'd be back to a trim figure in no time. The French disposition for thinness, not to mention his Malfoy heritage, would inevitably win out over Harry's imported truffles. 

Especially as Harry's Auror training would leave him too busy to apparate over more than a few times a week. While the Wizengamot had been happy to let Draco and his Dark Mark leave the country, they'd been less enthused at the prospect of having him back to visit and forbid re-entrance without explicit permission, meaning he couldn't visit him.

And then Harry's visits became even fewer after he'd left training and begun going out on assignments. And then even fewer still after he'd arrived half-asleep and with a splinched toe and Draco had thereafter forbid apparating while exhausted.

Thus, Draco really should have been fitting back into his Eighth Year robes by now, rather than being hounded by a bloody mirror for the unflattering strain on the seams of his newest ones.

But perhaps he should have taken into account that indulging in his favourite Parisian truffles no longer required Harry special-ordering them. 

(Though he certainly could not have been expected to anticipate the constant taunts of the Petit Fours from the bakery just across the road.)

Draco had known this would be Harry's longest mission, but he hadn't anticipated it taking over three weeks with still no end in sight.

The last owl he's received was two days ago now and, after taking into account all the words scratched out by someone with a better grasp on the concept of _top secret mission_ than The Boy Who Lived, all it had said was that he was in "************", would be back "soon" and loved Draco "with all my heart".

But it's fine. It's not as if Draco misses the prat. The letters he's sent off in return have only been for the purpose of teasing Harry for his embarrassing sentimentality. And then, a few hours later, to berate him for not writing back yet and to provide a four-page long list of additional grievances, such as the dirty socks he'd left behind. And then one the next morning that had started off as an apology but then, in Draco's hungover state, turned into an angry "you better not get yourself killed you bloody wanker" followed by a reminder of the socks stinking up the hallway.

Draco's far too busy brewing for Madame Marchand to miss Harry, anyways. And he hardly misses Harry's tendency to get handsy with the softer bits on his tummy and hips and then agree with the mirror that they've got softer.

Though, if one must have a belly, Draco will concede that one might as well also have a boyfriend who's there to rub it. He does rather like being paid attention to, after all, and it would undoubtedly get tedious to have boyfriend who politely ignored the alteration in his figure.

If he has to have gained a few pounds, then those few pounds might as well be properly admired.

And Harry is about as subtle as a hippogriff, but he can hardly be said to be stingy with his attentions.

Though he can't exactly indulge in his fetish for Draco looking "safe" and "happy" — and trust Draco to have found a boyfriend with such a _sentimental_ fetish — when he's off trying to get himself killed in wherever the hell "************" is. Indeed, if he's absent for much longer, Draco's diet will have trimmed down every one of the softer bits Harry's so bloody fond of.

That would just serve the arsehole right, though, he thinks darkly.

And then wanders off to find parchment and an owl to inform him of this. 

It's going on another week without a return letter when a loud crack startles Draco from where he's sat by the fire with Moste Potente Potions.

Harry's name dies on his lips when the boy, after a moment's disorientation, finally seems to spot him.

And then they're kissing and kissing and Draco's calling him a bloody prat and various other names and Harry's murmuring over and over how much he's missed him. Draco's so stunned by the feel of him in his arms again that it takes him a minute to recognize the sting of blood on his tongue.

He jerks back and finally takes in the sight of his idiot boyfriend.

There's a bleeding cut on his lower lip and a bruise on his cheek. A cheek which, under the swelling, looks a bit thinner than it had been. His hair is a dirty mess of twigs and curls.

"I'm only bleeding a little," Harry dismisses. Then, looking Draco up and down, he says, "You look so good."

"Do I?" Draco huffs. "Well, _you_ look like you need a shower."

Harry's laugh sounds tired.

"Come here, twat." Draco taps his wand against his lip, and then his cheek. "You'd think an Auror who keeps trying to get himself killed would know some rudimentary healing spells."

Harry looks guilty as he reaches up to touch his healed lip. "I was possibly meant to portkey to St Mungo's for a check-up."

"What?" Draco demands. He steps back to survey him for additional injuries under his bedraggled and torn Auror's robes.

Harry reads his mind. "I'm fine. It was just a precaution."

"That's what you would say if you weren't fine," Draco accuses. And then he's suddenly reminded of the time Harry had arrived with a splinched toe.

Harry must remember as well because he adds quickly, "And I know I promised not to apparate here when I was tired, okay, but—"

"Yes, excuse me for preferring you not to splinch your bits off."

"But I wasn't even in England, so it wasn't cross-channel—"

"You were coming from just next door, then?" Draco folds his arms over his chest.

"Well, maybe not quite," Harry says. "But my bits are all still here."

"So you say." Draco gives up, though, and takes him back in his arms.

Harry smiles against Draco's shoulder and then rests a tired hand on top of his belly. Draco draws a sharp breath in before remembering that he has too much pride to be self-conscious that his diet has yet to fully take effect. But then he regrets relaxing again when his belly bumps firmly into Harry's leaner torso.

He keeps forgetting it's grown more stubborn about bumping into things lately. Things like potions workbenches and his boyfriend.

But at least Harry doesn't seem to mind, if the way he winds an arm around him to pull him closer is any indication.

"Potter—"

"I love you," Harry says quietly.

"You stink," Draco informs him.

"Yes, I might've heard that before." Harry laughs and Draco had almost forgot what an annoyingly lovely sound it is. 

Later, in the shower, Draco complains about having to heal more bruises — though thankfully no broken bones — on top of doing all of the work in getting his half-asleep boyfriend cleaned up. He would like to prolong the shower, maybe pay more attention to those bits that Harry didn't manage to splinch off, but Harry is too tired and only half-hard, so instead he wraps him up and lets him curl around him in bed.

"You're safe," Harry whispers, slipping a hand up under Draco's pyjama shirt.

His hair, a bit longer and shaggier than it had been, is still damp against Draco's neck. But it always takes so many bloody drying charms and Draco can't be arsed to get up and do yet another.

"_I'm_ safe?" Draco repeats incredulously, struggling against him to sit up. "Of course _I'm_ bloody safe."

His voice might come out a bit hysterical but, really, all _he_ has to fear is Madame Marchand's wrath when he mistimes the stirring of La Petite Amortentia. The bloody Boy Who Lived To Improbably End Up In Draco's Bed has already died once and been on the wrong side of Avada Kedavra more times than most wizards get the opportunity to count. 

"I know," Harry says, running a hand up over Draco's belly reverently, as if the fact that it still rounds out proves anything about his safety. "You just — you never wrote back after my last letter. You usually write me so much and I worried..."

"_I_ didn't write _you_? You're the one who didn't write me, Potter."

"I did," Harry sits up on his elbow and looks at Draco's face, eyes wide in the moonlight shining in through the cheap curtains. "Didn't you get that last one from Transylvania? You didn't write me back, though, and then our owl refused to take any more post out of—"

"I wrote you back," Draco interrupts.

"You did?" A frown knots Harry's brow. "What did you say?" 

"Erm." Draco thinks back to the content of those letters. "Nothing of import."

Harry looks at him for a long moment and then says, "If you say so" before tucking himself back into his side.

Draco rubs his back while Harry gets back to tracing the shape of his belly. After a moment, Harry's hand drifts downwards under the waistband of his pyjama bottoms. It's a tight squeeze as they may not fit Draco quite as well as they used to, but it's not too tight.

Still, Draco grabs his wrist. "Wait for the morning, Potter."

"But you're hard," Harry protests as he reaches for Draco's cock over his trousers this time.

"That doesn't mean I fancy a hand job from a boyfriend who's going to fall asleep halfway through." 

"Fine," Harry sighs. Possibly in retaliation, he squeezes the roll of pudge Draco likes to pretend hasn't settled on his hip. But then he yawns as if to prove his point. "You called me your boyfriend, you know."

"I always call you my boyfriend," Draco informs him.

"No, you call me Potter," Harry murmurs, squeezing his hip again, but a bit more gently this time. "Say Harry."

Draco swallows and says, hoarsely, "Harry."

Harry's name always comes out like this. Hoarse and vulnerable, no edge to it at all. It leaves him exposed every time he says it, strips away everything he prefers to hide behind.

But it also makes Harry hum contently against his shoulder and finally drift off to sleep.

Harry wakes him with a blowjob, which is really the only forgivable way to wake Draco at the crack of dawn. Draco's barely done returning the favour when Harry checks the time and jumps up to go for a run.

When Draco objects to him leaving bed without even the decency of a cuddle, Harry, pulling an old t-shirt over his head, informs him that he must head to the Ministry to debrief early this morning.

Then Draco questions why almost dying isn't enough to get him to take a day off training.

And Harry, a bit snappishly, says, "Stop saying I almost died."

But then whatever he must see in Draco's expression has him pressing an apologetic kiss to his forehead. "Sorry. I really didn't, though, I promise."

"Will you stay for breakfast at least?" Draco asks, not willing to let him go just yet. And certainly not without some food, as he's not looking like he's had a lot of that lately.

"Okay," Harry says, giving him a small smile. "I'll make it a short run, then."

Draco's afraid to ask when he's going to get a chance to visit again and instead decides not to think about it. Harry's alive and safe and that's more than Draco knew this time yesterday.

A short run for Harry still tends to take bloody forever, so he figures he can afford a bit more of a lie-in before he goes and harasses Madame Marchand's lazy house elf into making them breakfast.

He's contemplated joining Harry on one of his runs before. But, as curious as he is to see for himself if Parisian Muggles truly don't bat an eye at the sight of a grown man running down the pavement in pyjamas, he's not so eager to compare his and Harry's relative levels of fitness.

It's one thing having an athletic boyfriend in bed. Quite another, he suspects, giving him pitying looks as he huffs and puffs alongside him down the road.

"Isn't that Madame Marchand's owl?" Harry asks as he lets in the bird tapping impatiently at the window.

The owl lands on the breakfast table and shakes the thick stack of letters tied to its ankle, sending them flying into Harry's eggs and sausage.

Draco takes in the addresses. 'Harry Potter', 'The Great Git Harry Potter', 'The Wanker Who Lived', 'The Boy Who Fucking Better Have Lived This Time'.

He decides that Madame's owl has just exceeded her house elf on the scale of useless household staff.

"Oh." Harry picks one off the top. "Are these from you?"

When it's finally come time to let the Dragonbane preparation simmer overnight, Draco trudges back up to his small back house to... find Harry arranging Muggle take-away cartons.

"There you are." Harry gives him a soft smile across the kitchen.

"You're back," Draco says, stunned.

"I told you I would be after the debriefing." Harry runs a hand through his mess of shower-wet hair.

"No, you didn't." Draco notes with interest that Harry's got on nothing more than a pair of pyjama bottoms. There's a drop of water slowly trailing down the curve of the muscles of his chest.

Harry frowns. "I didn't?"

"You didn't."

"Oh." He shrugs. "Well, I actually have three days before I have to go back."

"Three entire days? So they're finally letting you take a proper holiday, then." If the words fail to come out as sarcastically as they should, it's because Draco's still taking in the sight of his boyfriend. As he'd suspected last night, he's a bit thinner than he'd been when he'd left a month ago. His arms and shoulders are still well-defined, but his collarbones are a bit too pronounced and his hipbones a bit too sharp.

Though, on further consideration, Draco's not complaining about the way his trousers sink low enough over them to tell that he's not wearing any underpants.

Back when Harry had still been stubbornly laboring under the impression that he was too scrawny, he'd been a bit more shy about going around undressed. More frequent shirtlessness has been a pleasant side effect of his Auror training.

Draco, however, does not make any more habit of prancing around the house half-naked than Harry used to. But he never has. The Manor was too proper. The Slytherin dungeons were too cold. This back house might not be too cold — or particularly proper, thanks to one Harry Potter — but he rather likes to pretend he's a bit closer to his formerly svelte figure than the mirror seems to think and being greeted by the pale little wobble of his midsection every time he looked down might make that rather difficult.

"You, erm, like the view?" Harry's voice cuts through his thoughts.

Draco looks up, refusing to be embarrassed at being caught staring. Harry's _his_ boyfriend and it's been weeks since he's seen him. So instead he just rolls his eyes and says, "No, Potter, I plan on filing a complaint over finding a Witch Weekly cover model shirtless in my kitchen."

Harry can't quite hide the smile that comes to his face. Nor the embarrassed-pleased way his cheeks flush. "That wasn't intentional, you know that."

"Did you just forget where the clothing's kept, then?"

"Er, no, the Witch Weekly cover, I mean," he says. "They didn't tell me that's what it was for."

"So the nudity for dinner was intentional, hmm?" Draco leans back against the door and cross his arms. "How hygienic of you."

"Erm, well, I might've been hoping to get your attention?"

Draco smirks. "Why, Potter, whatever for?"

Harry doesn't answer, just looks him up and down without any attempt at subtlety. "You look really good, you know."

"Do I?"

"_So_ good." Harry steps towards him, smile spreading over his face. "I'm glad you're off your diet."

Draco's still caught up in picturing where Harry might mean his attempt at flirting to lead. But when he finally processes that last bit, he narrows his eyes and holds his hand up to stop him from coming closer. "_Why_ would you think I'm off my diet?"

Harry frowns. "I figured with the new robes—"

"What about them?"

"Well, it's all your new clothes, really. I reckoned since you finally got them in a better size—"

"What was wrong with their _size_?" Draco demands.

"They were too small?" 

"They were not."

"It's not that you don't look good in tight robes!" Harry protests as he reaches out to him. "You really do. They were just looking uncomfortable. And also, since you kept refusing to engorgio it, I think the mirror might've been right about that button being about to pop off your shirt—"

"Engorgio ruins the fabric." Draco shoves Harry's placating hand away, refusing to think about the shirt hanging in his wardrobe that's still buttonless courtesy of a lazy house elf. "And that's irrelevant, anyways, since my clothes fit just fine."

"Well, I just figured, since you'd finally got bigger ones that—"

"They're not _bigger_, Potter. Perhaps you're not used to French tailoring," Draco sniffs. "But just because you insist on walking around in your pyjamas, doesn't mean the rest of us care so little about fashion."

"For the hundredth time, they're _tracksuit_ bottoms, not pyjamas," Harry snaps automatically. But then he sighs and runs a hand through his wet hair. "Look, Draco, no one cares if you need bigger clothes. I just thought that it meant you'd finally given up pretending you were on a diet."

"What do you mean pretending?" Draco throws his arms in the air. "Of course I was on a diet! I still am! Obviously!"

"Erm—"

"Also," Draco continues hotly. "Monsieur Tailleur even said that he had to cut the waist of my new robes a few inches smaller than the old ones."

Harry frowns, eyes dropping to Draco's middle. "Are you... sure?"

"Yes." Draco bristles. "As I'm on a _diet_."

"Right." Harry, finally stymied, just stares at him.

Draco glares back until Harry finally breaks and glances around the kitchen.

"So, erm, are you ready for dinner, then? I got extra of that curry you like."

Draco keeps glaring.

"What?" Harry sets his jaw stubbornly. "You can be on a diet and still eat an extra portion of curry, you know."

"Of course I know," Draco snaps. He's the one on a diet here, after all, and he hasn't had to keep from eating his fill at meals.

"Plus," Harry continues. "I think it's really more your sweet tooth and how you keep saying that exercise is for Muggles that... Erm. Never mind." He fidgets and then says, hopefully, "Did I tell you I got you some of those new pink macarons from across the road?"

"They're almond raspberry, Potter, and they're not new," Draco informs him. "_I_ wasn't the one gone for a month."

"Right." Harry looks away. "So does that mean you don't want—"

Draco huffs. "I didn't say that."

"Okay, then." Harry gestures to the take-away cartons again. "Dinner?"

"I thought something else was on offer first." Draco folds his arms over his chest, annoyed at Harry now trying to cheat him out of what was supposed to come before dinner. "Or what was this prancing around half-naked all about?"

Harry's mouth drops open. "I didn't, erm, ruin the mood, then?"

Draco thinks about that. He hardly wants to reward him for insinuating that he got fatter — especially as he _has_ been on a diet — but getting into shouting matches with The Boy Who Lived has never been the turnoff it probably should be.

So he decides, magnanimously, "I'd settle for an angry fuck."

Harry bites his lip. "Yeah, that sounds, erm, brilliant." But, when Draco tries to drag him towards the bedroom, he hedges, "Except that might not actually work? I think you're the only one who's angry right now."

Draco stops and sighs. "An apology blowjob, then, Potter. Do you think you can manage that?"

Harry nods vigorously.


End file.
